MONTPELIER -- Steve Perry of Randolph Center welcomed news Thursday
that a bill expanding eligibility for the state's medical marijuana
registry would become law -- even though the governor refused to sign
it.

Perry copes with a degenerative joint condition that causes severe
pain and muscle spasms. Traditional painkillers fail to provide
relief, he said, but marijuana has helped. Now he will be able to
register with the Department of Public Safety and have protection from
state prosecution while using the otherwise illegal drug.

The bill broadened the eligibility established in Vermont's 2004 law
by allowing those with chronic debilitating conditions, not just life-
threatening diseases, to participate in the program. It also increases
the number of plants that participants may grow at home and reduces
the annual registration fee from $100 to $50.

The marijuana bill is the fifth piece of legislation Gov. Jim Douglas
has allowed to become law this year without his signature. Jason
Gibbs, the governor's spokesman, said that generally Douglas exercises
this option when he doesn't agree with the policy but recognizes a
measure has strong support in the Legislature.

In the case of the marijuana bill, Gibbs said, "The governor has
compassion for people who are suffering from debilitating diseases,
but he can't in good conscience sanction a violation of federal law."

The paramilitary Carabinieri, a tough force which until recently was
stationed in Iraq, could be sent into schools to search for drugs. The
proposal follows widespread alarm in Italy at what is seen as rapidly
growing drug use among the young.

Livia Turco, the health minister in Romano Prodi's centre-left
government, said the consumption and trafficking of drugs by students
had reached the point at which it was time to begin checks throughout
Italy. Ms Turco, who has control of a Carabinieri detachment, said her
initiative reflected "a sense of responsibility towards parents".

Parental concern has spiralled in recent months, largely because of
photos and videos posted on the web that give an impression of
widespread anarchy in the country's classrooms. Earlier this month, a
video was posted on the internet, apparently showing a teacher rolling
a marijuana "spliff" in front of his pupils. It was later shown on
television.

Last month also saw the death of a 15-year-old pupil at a school near
Milan. It was found that just prior to his death he had been smoking
cannabis; and at the postmortem, traces of cocaine were also found.

Whether these high-profile incidents reflect a growing phenomenon is
unclear. But official statistics indicate that drug use has become
extremely common among urban youths.

A recent survey by the health authorities in Milan found that almost
70% of 15- to 24-year-olds had used cannabis. That compares with a
nationwide average of 25% and a Europe-wide average of 17% in a survey
for Drug Watch International in the 1990s.

In theory, the Italian authorities are enforcing a policy of zero
tolerance. The previous, conservative government of Silvio Berlusconi
introduced legislation that abolished the distinction between soft and
hard drugs and made it illegal to be found in possession of even small
quantities of narcotics.

We Have Nothing to Show for Decades of Arrests, Punishments and
Seizures

Have you heard the news? Stephen Harper thinks he's Ronald Reagan.
"The Conservative government is set to launch a regressive war on
drugs," a Liberal press release says.

The war is scheduled to start this week, when the government releases
a new National Drug Strategy that will -- according to a report in
this newspaper last week -- get tough on drugs. More law enforcement.
More treatment and prevention.

But less "harm reduction" -- including the end of support for
"Insite," Vancouver's safe-injection facility.

And so the lines have been drawn. On one side are those who say they
are defending the liberal Canadian approach against a Reagan-era war
on drugs. On the other are those who say the liberal Canadian approach
amounts to government aiding and abetting drug use and must be
replaced by a strong effort to stop use before it starts.

As emotionally satisfying as it would be to have a good bash at the
Tories, I'm afraid I can't. It's not that they're right. They're not.
Insite and other harm-reduction policies are supported by extensive
peer-reviewed research. The government's preferred package -- more
enforcement, tougher sentences, more treatment and prevention -- has
failed ever since Richard Nixon's White House first assembled it back
in the days when disco was cutting edge.

A Paramilitary Boss' Testimony Underscores Militias' Grip on Political
and Business Life in the Nation.

SINCELEJO, COLOMBIA -- This is the chronicle of a death foretold.

Mayor Eudaldo "Tito" Diaz knew he was a marked man. He had resisted
right-wing paramilitary fighters in El Roble, a town in the northern
state of Sucre, and the assassins had him in their sights. In a town
hall meeting, he confronted Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, grabbing
the microphone and warning that he was going to be killed.

Two months later, Diaz was seized by a dozen men in several cars,
apparently betrayed by members of his personal security team.

He was taken to the notorious paramilitary "concentration camp," a
ranch called El Palmar where several mass graves have been found. He
was tortured for five days before being shot to death.

The assassination of Diaz, a 47-year-old doctor, affords a glimpse of
the nightmare that war-torn Colombia has experienced for decades. The
nation relived the nightmare this month with the testimony of
paramilitary capo Salvatore Mancuso, as he confessed to drug
trafficking, mass murder, extortion and usurping vast tracts of land -
-- all with the help of corrupt politicians.

In the four northern states, including Sucre, that Mancuso controlled,
politicos who resisted were ruthlessly cut down. Diaz became one of
the victims in April 2003.

"My father died wanting a better country, where mafias can't traffic
in drugs and loot cities, where innocent people aren't killed at the
whim of politicians to perpetuate themselves in power," said Juan
David Diaz, the late mayor's 28-year-old son, who also is a doctor and
who now heads the local victims rights group Movement of Victims of
State Crimes, based here in Sucre's capital.

If legislators would take heed to Newton's Third Law of motion when
creating drug policy, we would not spend so much time correcting the
tragic "equal and opposite reaction" we so often find ourselves in.
The U.S. Sentencing Commission has finally made a small step towards
reforming the 1980's crack-cocaine laws which voraciously ripped
through our black communities. Two midwestern columnists explore
this issue concluding with the education/treatment solution which we
are, hopefully, moving towards.

Another columnist, a recovering addict from Hawaii, turned the
tables by insinuating addiction also lies on the side of the
prohibitionist who must "first admit that we have a problem" before
recovery can begin. He reveals that the UK has already taken this
step and that we all should be following the Dutch model.

A federal commission has taken a small step toward eliminating a
cocaine sentencing disparity that has upset civil rights advocates
for almost two decades.

[snip]

Since the late 1980s, federal sentences for crack cocaine crimes
have been far more severe than those for crimes involving equal
amounts of powdered cocaine. Because crack is a bigger problem in
poor urban neighborhoods and powdered cocaine use is more prevalent
among the wealthy, civil rights groups claimed the disparity was
unfair to minority groups.

[snip]

An amendment approved last month by the Sentencing Commission would
not eliminate the mandatory minimums but would decrease the advised
sentences for many crack cocaine crimes. Some sentences would be cut
by 20 percent.

WASHINGTON -- Looking for a way to improve the responsibility-taking
among black fathers? Or to improve the economic standing and
stability of black families overall? Or for confronting these
statistics: One of every three black kids is being raised by a
never-married mother; one of 20 white children is being raised by a
never-married mom.

One step to addressing this complicated problem is to rewrite a law
that forces federal judges to send people to jail for mere
possession of one type of drug, a substance more commonly used in
the black community than by whites. Crack cocaine is created by
adding powder cocaine to baking soda and water and then baking the
mixture. The result is broken into "rocks" and can be sold in very
small quantities. In the mid-1980s crack became a significant
problem in cities.

To try to get a grip on what some called the crack epidemic,
Congress set the penalty for possession of a tiny amount of crack (
"tiny" being the size of two sugar packets, enough for 10 to 15
doses ) as an automatic five-year prison sentence. Possession of the
same amount of powder cocaine generally gets probation; Congress has
declared that judges don't have to send a powder cocaine possessor
to jail until the amount of the drug reaches the 200-sugar-packet
size, which produces 2,500 to 5,000 doses.

She [Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District of Columbia's House
representative] said while Congress ignored what it had wrought --
not for racist reasons but in an attempt to get a grip on the crack
problem of the 1980s -- "a whole generation of black people are
condemned now to losing the family culture, and a whole generation
of black children are being raised with no father."

There are so few black men for middle-class black women to marry --
men without a record, capable of getting a job -- that "there is a
whole generation of black women who will never be married," she
said.

[snip]

[Rep. Mark ] Souder agrees that the statistics about black men in
prisons are irrefutable. But he's unwilling to lay that all at the
door of the crack-powder sentencing disparity.

[snip]

What is not in dispute is that a disproportionate percentage of
black men are in U.S. prison cells.

For reasons of fairness and to help lessen the mistrust in the legal
system, Congress would be wise to tackle this.

Their front-page tragedies put faces on debilitating statistics.
Black American males between the ages of 15 and 24 have the highest
firearm homicide rate of any demographic group in our nation. Ten
times more black males are shot to death in that age range than
white males. According to the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, about 52 percent of this nation's gun-murder victims are
African American, even though we represent less than 13 percent of
the total population. If all Americans were killed with firearms at
the same rate as African-American males between the ages of 15 and
24, there would be more than a quarter of a million gun murders in
the United States annually.

Make no mistake about it: This is still that same sad story of
black-on-black crime. But the magnitude is new. I attribute it to
the "war on drugs." Two decades ago, Congress went on a "get tough
on drugs" rampage. The results have visited devastating collateral
damage on the African-American community. Black men have unfairly
and disproportionately been targeted as enemy combatants in this
trumped-up war. A black man is 13 times more likely to go to state
prison than a white man.

And while drug use is consistent across all racial groups, blacks
and Latinos are much more likely to get busted, prosecuted and given
long sentences for drug offenses, according to the latest report by
Human Rights Watch. That explains why African Americans, who make up
13 percent of all drug users, are 35 percent of those arrested for
drug possession, 55 percent of those convicted and 74 percent of
those sent to prison.

[snip]

One of my sons could be next -- or one of yours. We need to stop
this cancer from further spreading. We need to scale down the raids
and scale back the sentencing on nonviolent offenses. We need to put
our energies into educating to prevent incarcerating.

THE WAR ON DRUGS is a disaster. Just read the daily headlines:
arrests and record drug seizures every week; worldwide violence
related to drug cartels and gangs; new ( and deadlier ) drugs
targeted to kids. The very fact that our government believes we need
drug testing in schools is a tacit admission that the current
strategy isn't working.

So what do we do about it?

The first step in recovery is admitting you have a problem. That's
something Great Britain recently did. Two months ago, the United
Kingdom Drugs Policy Commission issued a brutally honest report that
concluded Britain's own War on Drugs was "a total failure." The
panel included a diverse group of experts, ranging from health
professionals to law enforcement officials.

Their frank assessment found that decades of Brit-style "Just Say
No" campaigns had little impact on deterring drug use. The report
stated: "Whether we like it or not, drugs are and will remain a fact
of life. On that basis, the aim of the law should be to reduce the
amounts of harm caused to individuals, their friends and families,
their children and their communities."

[snip]

THEY RECOMMENDED a shift from the current "criminal justice bias" to
recognizing addiction as a health and social problem. The report
also advocated "supervised drug consumption rooms" as a means of
preventing overdoses, and getting addicts into treatment.

It's not as if these are radical new ideas. Other European countries
have already implemented sensible policies, and the Brits themselves
have some experience in this area. From the 1920s to the 1960s,
heroin was routinely prescribed to U.K. addicts. The population of
junkies remained stable at around 2,000 during that period. When the
laws were changed in 1971, the black market for heroin exploded. The
United Kingdom now has 300,000 addicts.

[snip]

Does the Dutch way work? Thirty years ago, there were about 30,000
heroin addicts in the Netherlands. Today, the number of junkies is
the same, even though the population has grown by 6 percent. That
means fewer new users are becoming addicted.

By treating junkies with prescription heroin, they also found that
addicts commit fewer crimes to support their habits -- which
translates to less government spending, as well. Numerous studies
show it's much cheaper to treat drug users than imprison them. For
every dollar spent on treatment, taxpayers save more than $7 in
prison costs, according to one analysis.

[snip]

We are a nation in denial. Instead of taking responsibility for
being the world's largest consumer of illegal substances, we blame
other countries for supplying them. Parents would rather point
fingers at schools or the media, when the truth is many kids are
using "legal" drugs they can find in their own parents' medicine
cabinets.

As a recovering addict, I've seen the damage done by alcohol and
drugs. Some people ( like me ) cannot handle the stuff, and
shouldn't touch it. Abstinence for all, however, isn't realistic or
necessary. That's why I believe the best we can do is to lessen
demand and reduce harm.

Let's hear a big Hallelujah for the great state of Texas! After
years of topping the incarceration per capita charts, a bill is on
the way to the Governor which will clear out jail cells by moving
low-level inmates to supervised programs and enhance drug treatment
programs. As we say down in these here parts, YeeHaw!!

Unfortunately, a county in the more 'enlightened' state of
Washington cut it's Drug Court program in half last week due to
budgetary constraints.

A Florida columnist used Memorial Day to honor victims of our Drug
War. After recounting a few of the recent 'mistaken deaths" and
reviewing the effects of training police officers as soldiers, he
concludes that the majority of citizens now want treatment/education
as an 'exit strategy'.

Two articles about the DEA caught my eye this week. Slate published
an interesting article covering the method used to calculate costs
of prohibited substances by the agency. And I'm sure few readers
missed the Colorado article which calmly revealed that students of
their Citizens Academy assisted local agents in the manufacturing of
methamphetamine.

AUSTIN - A bill that permits early release for certain prison
inmates and gives those on parole a chance to shorten their terms
passed the Senate on Sunday, but it may not make it to a House vote
today before the Legislature adjourns. The bill, crafted by Sen.
John Whitmire, D-Houston, and Rep. Jerry Madden, R-Richardson, aims
to reduce prison populations and keep the state from having to build
new lockups.

[snip]

TDCJ [Texas Department of Criminal Justice] officials have argued
that there's no avoiding the need for construction of three new
prisons they predict a shortfall of 11,000 prison beds by 2011.

But Mr. Madden and Mr. Whitmire say they can cope with that
shortfall by moving thousands of low-level or parole-ready prison
inmates into supervised community programs, and by bolstering
substance-abuse programs to free up beds used by minor drug and
alcohol offenders.

The budget includes funding for many of these programs, including
adding 8,000 prison beds in the next few years for drug treatment
programs.

Despite the new programs, the budget does include funding for three
new prisons, but only if the legislative budget board deems they are
necessary. Earlier language forcing the TDCJ to evaluate the
effectiveness of diversion programs before building new prisons was
stripped from the budget.

With the help of an intensive Snohomish County drug program commonly
called Drug Court, the single mom put her life together, beat the
addiction, got her kids back and is thriving with a job at a
Lynnwood retail store.

Now, it's likely that the number of people like Forget who can be
helped by Drug Court will steadily drop.

The county's judges have decided to reduce the number of people in
the program from the current level of 150 to 75.

[snip]

The decision to gradually reduce the number of people in the program
was not an easy one, said Judge George Bowen, who heads the Drug
Court program. He acknowledges that a client load of 200 or 300
could be met if enough money were available.

The program has one full-time coordinator who works a big caseload,
including initial interviews, with the help of an intern.

[snip]

Of the 257 people who have graduated from the program over the
years, only 17 have committed new crimes, about a 94 percent success
rate.

The judges made getting a second coordinator an emphasis in last
year's county budget request, but the money was cut. Bob
Terwilliger, court administrator, said the judges will make another
attempt this year to get additional funding from the Snohomish
County Council.

On this Memorial Day, I'd like to pause a moment to remember those
who have lost their lives - or much of what's left of them - in a
different sort of war.

It's a war that's fueled by a lust for a foreign product other than
oil; a product whose distribution has become one of the only sources
of commerce and power for people in poor, predominantly black
communities.

It's a war that has packed prisons and desolated neighborhoods. A
war which, after raging for three decades, has done little to curb
people's appetite for the product.

That product is cocaine. The war is the War on Drugs. This war costs
more than $40 billion a year. It's a war rooted in economics and
addiction, but one that is being fought by police and prisons.

And there's no exit strategy in sight.

[snip]

When police are made to feel that they are soldiers in a war,
they're going to rally to each other. That's what warriors do -
commend each other for staying alive. The problem, however, is that
when police are made to feel like warriors, entire communities are
liable to become battlegrounds.

That means that instead of making those communities safer, they make
them scarier. People like Johnston and Singletary wind up getting
hurt or killed because they happened to get in the way of pursuits
of penny- ante dealers; dealers whose presence will surely be
replenished by others once they're sent away.

That's no victory. That's just running in place.

[snip]

Sixty-one percent of people polled by the University of North
Florida recently agreed that the crime rate should be tackled by
more attention to social problems instead of devising more
punishments.

More than half said Duval County wasn't spending enough money on
crime prevention and intervention programs for juveniles. That's
encouraging, because it means that people want the criminality to
stop without people like Johnston and Singletary paying with their
lives.

Federal prosecutors charged 44 people in a drug-smuggling ring
Wednesday, having confiscated a stash that included 350 kilograms of
high-grade heroin from Colombia, 220 kilograms of cocaine, 1
kilogram of methamphetamine, and 150 pounds of marijuana. The
authorities pegged the value of the heroin alone at $35 million. How
do law-enforcement officers put a price tag on seized drugs?

They check the DEA's own price list. The agency keeps tabs on local
busts all over the country, testing drug samples and recording data
like price, quantity, purity, where the stuff was headed, and how it
was to be mixed with other substances. Informants and undercover
agents also give regular updates on both retail and wholesale prices
of illegal drugs. The information compiled by all 21 field offices
goes into a quarterly report called "Trends in Trafficking," which
is sent around to police departments. It's hard for regular citizens
to get their hands on that useful report, but some of the same data
appear in this detailed publication from the Office of National Drug
Control Policy.

Based on word on the street, for instance, the DEA knows that an
eight ball of cocaine-about 10 lines-goes for $125 to $200 in New
York City, upward of $200 north of the city, and up to $300 in
western New York state. The anti-drug agency also tracks how pure
products are. A gram of coke in Georgia will cost $75 to $100 and is
probably 38 percent to 86 percent pure. Better not to buy in South
Carolina, however, where a gram will be of lower quality-25 percent
to 55 percent pure-and more expensive at $50 to $170.

DEA Holds Awareness Class to Show Citizens How Easy It Is to Make
the Drug.

Cooking methamphetamine takes only a few hours and requires simple
household ingredients, like striker plates from matchbooks, the guts
of lithium batteries, drain cleaner.

"It's pretty gross," said Matt Leland, who works in career services
at the University of Northern Colorado and who recently helped cook
the drug in a lab. "If someone was truly interested in manufacturing
meth, it would not be that hard."

The Drug Enforcement Administration invited Leland and other
citizens - - such as software engineers, a teacher, a pastor and a
school principal - to make methamphetamine last week in a lab at
Metropolitan State College of Denver.

[snip]

The class was held as part of the DEA's first Citizens Academy in
order to give the public a close-up view of what the agency does to
keep drugs off the street.

Although meth remains a significant problem across the U.S., the
number of clandestine labs has dropped because some of the
ingredients are harder to obtain.

[snip]

Jeff Sweetin, the DEA's special agent in charge of the Rocky
Mountain region, says methamphetamine is now largely a smuggling
issue. Most of the product comes from Mexican cartels that
manufacture the drugs in "superlabs" where cooks are capable of
quickly making pound after pound, he said.

Sweetin said Mexican authorities are trying to stop the
manufacturing of meth in their country by implementing the
restrictions on ingredients that exist in the U.S.

In a federal court government employees once again demonstrate their
ethical bankruptcy. Will the feds allow University of Massachusetts
agronomy professor Lyle E. Craker to grow research marijuana as the
editorial, below, recommends? From Canada, a glimmer of common
sense, or is it?

Last week I highlighted what I thought would be all the obituaries
for Dr. Tod Mikuriya. Not so. This week saw versions of the New York
Times obituary also printed in the San Jose Mercury News; the
Chicago Tribune; and one of Canada's two national newspapers, the
Globe and Mail.

Ed Rosenthal was a free man, but not a happy one, after a jury
convicted him Wednesday for a second time of violating federal drug
laws by growing marijuana for medical patients.

Rosenthal, 62, of Oakland -- an authority on cannabis cultivation,
former columnist for High Times magazine and longtime advocate of
legalizing marijuana -- was fuming that the same federal judge who
declined to imprison him had also refused to let him argue to jurors
that his purpose was healing people, not dealing drugs.

"Once again, the jury was not allowed to hear valuable information
it needed to make an unbiased and fair decision," Rosenthal said
outside court after he was convicted of three felony charges. After
the jurors learn that they were "compelled to make an immoral
decision," he said, they will regret the verdict for the rest of
their lives.

Jurors left the federal courthouse in San Francisco without
discussing the case. Assistant U.S. Attorney George Bevan declined
comment. Rosenthal's lawyers said they would ask the judge to throw
out the convictions at a hearing next week.

[snip]

The charges normally carry a sentence of at least five years in
prison, but U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer sentenced Rosenthal
to only a day in jail, which he had already served. Breyer said
Rosenthal had believed he was acting legally because Oakland had
designated him as its agent in the city's medical marijuana program.

[snip]

In both trials, Breyer barred evidence that the marijuana was
intended for medical use under Proposition 215, the 1996 California
initiative allowing patients to use the drug with their doctor's
approval. He also excluded evidence about Rosenthal's designation as
an agent by the city of Oakland.

Left without a defense, Rosenthal's lawyers called no witnesses at
the retrial, and instead argued that the prosecution's case was
tainted by the testimony of some of Rosenthal's former friends and
business partners who had been granted leniency.

Defense lawyers also did all they could to remind jurors of the
state law -- addressing them as "fellow Californians" during opening
and closing arguments, and urging them to do the right thing without
fear of repercussions. But prosecutor Bevan told jurors they were
bound by Breyer's instructions, which required them to apply federal
drug laws.

DISCUSSION OF medical marijuana has always been heavy on rhetoric,
elisions and grandiose claims. What it has lacked is reliable
research that might bring some of the discussion into line with
reality. This is because access to the government's monopoly supply
of research-grade marijuana is so restricted that the necessary
research is effectively impossible. Now the Drug Enforcement
Administration's chief administrative law judge is recommending that
the federal drug police allow competition in growing marijuana for
research purposes. The administration should follow her
recommendation.

At issue is the supply of research-grade marijuana produced at the
University of Mississippi and overseen by the National Institute on
Drug Abuse. This supply is supposed to be made available to
DEA-registered researchers who have undergone a rigorous review and
approval process by the U.S. Public Health Service. However, both
medical marijuana advocates and scientists say the institute
routinely refuses to make its supply available even to licensed
researchers for properly authorized studies. There are at least two
FDA-approved studies that cannot go forward because no research
samples are available.

This leaves researchers -- and the 12 states that have so far
approved marijuana for medical purposes -- in a Catch-22: Drug
warriors object that there is no research demonstrating marijuana's
efficacy while preventing such research from being done. Since 2001,
a scientist with the University of Massachusetts Amherst has vainly
petitioned the DEA for permission to produce, under conditions that
even the DEA acknowledges present little risk of diversion for
illicit use, another supply of research-grade marijuana.

In a recent ruling, Judge Mary Ellen Bittner agreed that that
request would be in the public interest. Given its narrow confines,
Bittner's recommendation makes sense. It has no bearing on the DEA's
licensing of researchers, which would remain in place, nor would it
remove the burden of proof on scientists who want access to
research-grade marijuana. It would merely prevent situations in
which, the judge noted, legitimate researchers who have completed
all due diligence are still refused access to research samples.

A Chinese immigrant from Toronto who was duped into working on one
of Manitoba's largest-ever marijuana grow operations has been hit
with a stiffer sentence by the province's highest court.

Fai Tan Ng was originally given a one-month penalty after pleading
guilty to production of marijuana.

The Manitoba Court of Appeal has now agreed with the Crown's
argument the penalty is too light and increased it to a full year.

However, Ng "poses no danger to the community" and will be allowed
to serve his sentence in the community, the court ruled.

The arrest of Ng and 27 other accused in 2004 made national
headlines and drew a large volume of support for their plight. They
were found stacked like sardines inside a tiny home on a sprawling
property near Sundown, Man., which housed a multimillion-dollar pot
facility.

The accused had all been lured from Ontario to the Prairies with the
promise of quick cash in exchange for some "farm labour".

In Ng's case, he had recently lost his job as a cook, had limited
ability to speak English and was struggling to support his family.

He was told by a friend of a job that could pay upwards of $500 per
day and was eventually put on a bus and driven to Manitoba. It was
only upon arrival that Ng and the others realized they weren't going
to be dealing with grain or dairy farming.

Source: New York Times (NY)Pubdate: Tue, 29 May 2007
Copyright: 2007 The New York Times Company
Author: Margalit Fox

Dr. Tod H. Mikuriya, a California psychiatrist who was widely
regarded as the grandfather of the medical marijuana movement in the
United States, died on May 20 at his home in Berkeley. He was 73.

The cause was complications of cancer, his family told California
news organizations.

Dr. Mikuriya, who helped make the use of marijuana for medicinal
purposes legal in California, spent the last four decades publicly
advocating its use, researching its effects and publishing articles
on the subject.

He was an architect of Proposition 215, the state ballot measure
that in 1996 made it legal for California doctors to recommend
marijuana for seriously ill patients. He was also a founder of the
California Cannabis Research Medical Group and its offshoot, the
Society of Cannabis Clinicians.

As a result of his work, Dr. Mikuriya was considered a savior by
some, a public menace by others. To his supporters, he was a
physician of last resort: for years, a stream of patients with
illnesses like cancer and AIDS made their way to his private
practice in Berkeley. Dr. Mikuriya sometimes wrote a dozen or more
recommendations for marijuana each day; at his death, he was
reported to have approved the drug for nearly 9,000 patients.

Elsewhere, however, Dr. Mikuriya's work found little favor. In 1996,
for instance, Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, director of the Office of
National Drug Control Policy under President Bill Clinton, publicly
derided the doctor's medical philosophy as "the Cheech and Chong
show."

[snip]

Dr. Mikuriya saw his work, he often said, as a means of righting a
historical wrong, namely the backlash against medical marijuana that
began in the "Reefer Madness" era of the late 1930s.

"It had been available to clinicians for one hundred years until it
was taken off the market in 1938," he told The East Bay Express, a
Northern California newspaper, in 2004. "I'm fighting to restore
cannabis."

[snip]

Among doctors who support the therapeutic use of marijuana, many are
publicly circumspect when asked if they ever take a taste of their
own medicine. Not so Dr. Mikuriya. As The Los Angeles Times reported
in 2004, "He willingly acknowledges, unlike most of his peers in
cannabis consulting, that he does indeed smoke pot, mostly in the
morning with his coffee."

We start off this week with an overview of the failure of U.S. drug
policy in South America by Hugh O'Shaughnessy, in the Independent on
Sunday newspaper. Prohibition has resulted in, "Production as high
as ever, street prices at a low, and the governments of the region
in open revolt." Some highlights: Evo Morales, a coca farmer, was
elected president in Bolivia, while Hugo Chavez (president of
Venezuela) has denounced U.S. DEA agents as spies, preventing them
from operating in the country. In Ecuador, newly elected President
Rafael Correa has barred the U.S. from using Manta airfield, and has
refused to allow U.S. aerial spraying. In Colombia, president Alvaro
Uribe "is in deep political trouble as his opponents dig up
unsavoury evidence of his past," and the Colombian congress is
dragged down by scandal. "Big business is also caught up in drug
dealing. In March, Chiquita Brands International, a U.S. banana
multinational, was fined $25m by the U.S. Justice Department for
having funded the AUC, the principal Colombian death squad which is
closely linked to international drug-smuggling." Cocaine at record
low prices in the U.S.A. Bill to U.S. taxpayers? A bargain at only
$25 billion. Concludes O'Shaughnessy, "drugs clearly can't be
controlled by armies and police forces."

In a separate unsigned editorial, the Independent on Sunday added,
"the world is finally beginning to realise that you can't beat
narcotics with machine guns and policemen's truncheons... in parts
of the world where the US is not the sole decider of the policy of
the international community, more hopeful approaches are being
tried. In Afghanistan, the British Government, responsible for
security in the poppy-growing areas in the south, may be prepared to
allow opium to be produced legally for medical purposes."

In Canada, moves by the minority conservative government of Stephen
Harper to portray the supervised injection center in Vancouver as a
failure in a pretext to close it, has drawn a firestorm of protest.
Reports appeared in the Canadian press last week that top Health
Canada officials ordered the debunking of "myths" about the safe
injection center, Insite. But experts say the "myths" appear to be
something the government just made up. "These 'myths' illustrate the
poor understanding of whoever crafted these myths," said Dr. Julio
Montaner, clinical director of the B.C. Centre of Excellence for
HIV/AIDS. "We have never ever said anything close to this." And why
were these straw-man "myths" cooked up in the first place? Admitted
one Health Canada official: "the document was developed in reaction
to the assertions of Vancouver activists." Ironically, a report in a
British medical Journal (Addiction) this week "endorsed the benefits
of Vancouver's controversial safe-injection site for heroin
addicts," finding, "Insite increased the rate of addicts entering
detox by 30 per cent."

Meanwhile, in what may be a first in the history of drug
prohibition, "five leading scientists" in Canada publicly announced
a "boycott" on "bidding for Health Canada contracts to conduct
further research into Insite's operation... We wish to state our
deep concern regarding the subversion of science for ideological
ends, and express our commitment to speak out against this threat...
This case is an alarming example of a recent trend towards the
increased politicization of science." The scientists include Dr.
Michael Hwang of the Centre for Research on Inner-City Health at St.
Michael's Hospital, and Benedikt Fischer, a director of the B.C.
Centre for Addictions Research at the University of Victoria.

America has spent billions battling the drug industry in Bolivia,
Colombia and Peru. And the result? Production as high as ever,
street prices at a low, and the governments of the region in open
revolt.

[snip]

The estimated $25bn (UKP13bn) that Washington has spent trying to
control narcotics over the past 15 years in Latin America seems to
have been wasted.

In 2005, according to UN guesses - and, amid merciless political
spinning of what few facts there are- Colombia, Peru and Bolivia,
the main producers of cocaine, had the capacity to produce 910
metric tons a year. As more productive strains of coca bushes
appear, production has been increasing. Unsurprisingly, the price of
cocaine on U.S. streets has tumbled, according to the White House
drug tzar John Walters, to $135 (UKP70) a gram, a fraction of the
$600 a gram it was fetching in 1981. The purity of cocaine has gone
from 60 per cent in mid-2003 to more than 70 per cent last October.
Like the conflict in Iraq, the US's other great war is now being
visibly lost.

[snip]

But the determination of Morales, the leader of a poor country of
nine million people, is only a tiny part of Latin America's
rejection of the "war on drugs". In a Venezuela enriched by high
prices for its oil exports, President Hugo Chavez, himself a
political and financial supporter of Morales and ally of Fidel
Castro, is placing strict controls on his country's co-operation
with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). The
democratically elected Chavez sees the DEA as an arm of a government
which was involved with the right-wing coup d'etat in 2002, which
toppled him briefly.

He sees it as devoted as much to Washington's political and military
strategies in Latin America as to the battle against narcotics. The
plain-speaking Chavez, who has called President Bush "a devil", has
accused the DEA of spying.

Pedro Carreno, Chavez's justice minister, has said that Venezuela
would not allow the DEA to mount anti-drug operations on its
territory. Chavez has also forbidden overflights by U.S. government
aircraft. Carreno suggested that instead of Plan Colombia, the U.S.
"should apply a Plan Washington, New York, or Miami, so that they
fly over their own air space, and take care of their coast and
border because 85 per cent of the drugs that are produced in Latin
America go to the United States."

Now a third Latin American leader, the newly elected President
Rafael Correa of Ecuador, has announced that his country will ignore
U.S. instructions in the "war on drugs". He has announced that he
will no longer allow U.S. forces to occupy a large base at the
Pacific port of Manta, which was leased to them by a previous
government and which the Pentagon says is used for aircraft
monitoring cocaine shipments between Peru and Colombia.

[snip]

But it is in the Colombian capital city, Bogota, that the "war on
drugs" is seriously falling apart. Colombia's president, Alvaro
Uribe, is in deep political trouble as his opponents dig up
unsavoury evidence of his past.

[snip]

Earlier this month, the Vice President, Francisco Santos announced
that "more than 40 members of congress" could go to prison because
of their links to drugs and death squads. More than a dozen
senators, congressmen and political insiders have been arrested.
This month, two police generals were sacked.

The truth is also emerging about the Colombian army, beloved of the
U.S. government but widely hated by many Colombians for its
closeness to the death squads. Senator Patrick Leahy ordered a
temporary freeze on tens of millions of dollars of U.S. military aid
after the Colombian army commander, General Mario Montoya, was found
to be deeply involved with the death squads.

Leahy condemned the waste of U.S. money in Colombia: "When Plan
Colombia began, we were told it would cut by half the amount of
cocaine in five years. Six years and $5bn later, it has not had any
measurable effect on the amount of cocaine entering our country."

Big business is also caught up in drug dealing. In March, Chiquita
Brands International, a U.S. banana multinational, was fined $25m by
the US Justice Department for having funded the AUC, the principal
Colombian death squad which is closely linked to international
drug-smuggling.

[snip]

The failure to stem the supply of heroin is illustrated by the fall
in price of a gram, from UKP70 in 2000 to UKP54 in 2005. The annual
number of drug offenders jailed more than doubled between 1994 and
2005 and the average length of their sentences went up. The courts
handed out nearly three times as much prison time in 2004 as they
did 10 years earlier.

Last month, an inquiry for the UK Drug Policy Commission said: "The
research suggests that the greatest reductions in drug-related harm
have come from investment in treatment and harm reduction. However,
the bulk of expenditure on drug policy in the UK is still devoted to
the enforcement of drug laws".

In Britain, as in Latin America, drugs clearly can't be controlled
by armies and police forces.

The worldwide "war on drugs" that relies on armies and police to
destroy crops and arrest traffickers has failed. The attempt to
suppress the Latin American drugs trade at source, first decreed by
Richard Nixon in the 1970s, has achieved nothing. Despite the
spending of $25bn(UKP13bn) of U.S. taxpayers' money, cocaine
production in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia has increased, as has
cocaine consumption in the U.S. and the rest of the rich world.

As Hugh O'Shaughnessy argues today, the world is finally beginning
to realise that you can't beat narcotics with machine guns and
policemen's truncheons. As this newspaper reported last month, in
parts of the world where the U.S. is not the sole decider of the
policy of the international community, more hopeful approaches are
being tried. In Afghanistan, the British Government, responsible for
security in the poppy-growing areas in the south, may be prepared to
allow opium to be produced legally for medical purposes. If the
price can be set at the right level, Afghan farmers would prefer the
lower but more certain returns of growing a legal crop to those of
an illegal one. It would bring a large sector of the Afghan economy
within the law and make diversification and development more likely.

This is an increasingly urgent issue. As our sister newspaper, The
Independent, reported last week, poppy-growing is spreading in the
lawless badlands of Iraq. This reversal of the direction of
causality from that found in Latin America, where illegal drug
production leads to instability and lawlordism, only reinforces the
argument against a punitive approach to tackling the sources of
narcotics supply. Once illegal drug production is in the hands of
gangsters it becomes difficult to prise open their grip.

Bureaucrat Gave Order Last Fall, Just Before Health Minister Refused
to Extend Vancouver Facility's Permit

OTTAWA -- A top federal health bureaucrat ordered other officials to
debunk five "myths" -- widely held but false public views -- about
Vancouver's supervised injection site last fall.

The five myths were: That supervised injection sites are "commonly
used" in other countries; that they operate "all across Canada;"
that they are legal; that they present "a complete solution" to
drug-use harms; and that the injection site "has the complete
support of the community."

Jo Kennelly, senior policy adviser to Health Minister Tony Clement,
ordered the debunking document just before Clement announced his
refusal last fall to extend the permit for the site.

[snip]

The document shoots down each of the so-called myths -- but there is
no indication which individuals or groups were espousing these
views.

[snip]

Dr. Julio Montaner, clinical director of the B.C. Centre of
Excellence for HIV/AIDS, said it was "stupid" to imply unanimous
support.

"These 'myths' illustrate the poor understanding of whoever crafted
these myths. We have never ever said anything close to this."

[snip]

Clement spokesman Erik Waddell said Friday the myth-busting document
was developed in reaction to the assertions of Vancouver activists.

"The five statements in that document are representative of
statements made to our office by various community groups in
Vancouver," Waddell, who didn't identify the groups, said in an
e-mail.

VANCOUVER -- On the eve of the expected unveiling next week of the
federal Conservatives' long-waited anti-drug strategy, a significant
new study has endorsed the benefits of Vancouver's controversial
safe-injection site for heroin addicts, a pilot project many fear
Ottawa will end.

The study, published today in the London-based medical journal
Addiction, found that use of the city's supervised injection
facility known as Insite increased the rate of addicts entering
detox by 30 per cent.

As well, the study determined users of North America's only
safe-injection site were more likely to reduce their heroin intake
and pursue formal treatment programs such as methadone once they
left detox.

The dramatic findings appear to echo precisely what the ultimate
arbiter of the facility's fate, federal Health Minister Tony
Clement, has said Insite needs to demonstrate to prove its worth:
lower drug use and success in fighting addiction.

They also fly in the face of an earlier RCMP report critical of the
site, asserting there is "considerable evidence" that allowing
addicts to shoot up safely increases the use of illegal drugs.

[snip]

Underscoring widespread skepticism among many researchers over the
government's alleged anti-harm-reduction agenda is a decision by
five leading scientists to boycott bidding for Health Canada
contracts to conduct further research into Insite's operation.

In an open letter to senior Health Canada policy analyst Tracey
Donaldson, the group said the five-month time frame is too short,
compensation is insufficient and successful bidders must agree to
keep mum over their research for six months.

"In no way is that acceptable to any academic," one of the
scientists, Benedikt Fischer of the University of Victoria, said
yesterday. "And how can anyone produce anything meaningful in such a
short time that goes beyond what has already been done by other
researchers?

VANCOUVER - Canadian scientists, doctors and public health
researchers have started openly protesting against what they call
the federal Conservative government's U.S.-style "politicization of
science" in the controversy over supervised-injection centres for
drug addicts.

Prominent addictions researchers from B.C., Ontario and Quebec have
written an open letter to Health Canada criticizing the department's
recent proposal call for new research on the centre in spite of four
years of existing research at the site showing positive outcomes.

They say the terms for the new research ensure that it will be
superficial, inadequately funded and subject to an unreasonable
demand that researchers not be allowed to talk about it for six
months after reports are submitted.

"Clearly what that does is to muffle people who might have something
to say until after the curtain has dropped on this piece of
political theatre," Benedikt Fischer, a director of the B.C. Centre
for Addictions Research at the University of Victoria, said in an
interview Friday. "Overall, we get the feeling that what this is
about is there's an attempt to instrumentalize science in a fairly
cheap way for politics."

[snip]

"We wish to state our deep concern regarding the subversion of
science for ideological ends, and express our commitment to speak
out against this threat," says the piece by Dr. Michael Hwang of the
Centre for Research on Inner-City Health at St. Michael's Hospital.
"This case is an alarming example of a recent trend towards the
increased politicization of science."

[snip]

Last month, Health Canada put out a request for proposals in six
different areas of research on the site. Among the specifics asked
for are the site's impact on overdose rates, users' progression to
treatment, public injection and drug-related litter, among others.

There are also contracts for researching the staffing requirements
and for comparing Vancouver's drug scene with other cities.

Last: 05/25/07 - Celebration of the life of Dr. Tod Mikuriya with
interview segments from the good doctor as well as thoughts and
remembrances of his sister Beverly and his friends Michael and
Michelle Aldrich and DrugSense's Richard Lake.

The flap over Public Health officials' inability to stop a honeymooner
from flying round-trip to Europe with a rare, drug resistant form of
Tuberculosis begs comparison with the tactics of the drug war, in
which heavily armed SWAT teams routinely serve search warrants to look
for drugs. The drug war can thus be thought of as merely a variant of
Public Health-- one practiced by police in accord with Department of
Justice standards -- a kind of Epidemiology run amok.

"It's not necessary to be a government agent provocateur. Even the
most well meaning among us can create chaos and division unless we
consider our words and actions carefully..." Mike Gray, Common Sense
for Drug Policy

The only fairly comfortable "players" in any court room setting are
the judge and the attorneys. Defendants, with their freedom on the
line, usually carry the majority of the pressure. Jurors, who often
hate the fact that they are even present, slowly realize that the
defendant's fate is in their hands. This week, though, it was 7
citizens proudly refusing to participate as prosecutorial witnesses
who reminded us that the full power of the court can strike all
those who enter it.

The judge issued the following stern warning to each witness:

"I also want you to understand that should you refuse the Court's
order, which is to testify in accordance with the -- in response to
the prosecution's questions, I can hold you in contempt and if I
hold you in contempt, you then will be subject to certain penalties,
including the possibility of incarceration or fines -- and/or fines.

In addition, the Government has the possibility of seeking a
criminal indictment against you for failure to follow the Court's
order."

Fortunately all witnesses were set free in the recent Rosenthal
re-trial, but, none of them knew this as they uttered the following
statements:

ETIENNE HERSCH FONTAN: "With respect to the Court, Your Honor, I, as
an American citizen and a veteran of this country, I see this as no
reason to answer any of these questions. I completely disagree with
this Court's actions with all respect to the Court. And I cannot
proceed with any answering of any of your questions.

As a sovereign American citizen, I disagree with this Court's
actions and I respect the Court, and I respect the words you have
spoken toward me. But I stand firmly in my belief that I will not
answer any of the questions. And I understand the repercussions that
are available.

I've been a product of this system before in the military. I
understand the incarceration and what the Government can do to me,
and I've been the subject of its guinea pig as a Gulf War veteran
and I've suffered because of that. And there is nothing you can do
to change my mind. I stand firmly behind my belief."

BRIAN LUNDEEN: "I'm going to refuse to answer questions. I love to
tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and if I swear to do
that, I'm going to by God get the opportunity."

EVAN SCHWARTZ: "I respectfully refuse to answer this question."

DEBORAH JOE GOLDSBERRY: "Sir, respectfully, again, I feel like this
prosecution is against the will of my community, against the will of
the voters of the United States, not just of California. I believe
that it is causing imminent harm, potentially death to my friends,
my family, the people that I love. I believe it would be immoral and
illegal for me to participate.

And as much as I respect the Court, I can't wait until you guys are
on our side of this thing. This thing is going to change, and I
appreciate that, and I'm sure you all do. I have no idea why we are
here. This is a literal joke.

And the truth is I can't participate. I have thought about the harm.
I've taken the threats seriously. They have sent the DEA after me. I
am living in fear and that is going to do nothing to break my will
because I'm a good citizen. I support this community."

JAMES SCOTT BLAIR, aka JIM SQUATTER: "At this time, I guess I'm
defying the Court's order."

CORY OKIE: "With all due respect to the Court, I refuse to answer
that question."

Jo-D Harrison is our DrugSense Membership Coordinator and part of
our Web Support Team.

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